Yesterday 01:38 PM

Por Jayson McNamara

Yesterday 09:34 AM

Por Jayson McNamara

A former Navy pilot convicted of participating in the infamous death flights that characterised Argentina’s 1976-83 military dictatorship was spotted Wednesday in the streets of Madrid.

A local newspaper journalist photographed Adofo Scilingo, 71, in Madrid on Wednesday.

Scilingo currently enjoys a transitory prison arrangement that allows him to spend time in the village of Soto Real when he is not in his Madrid prison cell.

An historic trial in a Spanish court in 2005 found Scilingo guilty of a number of crimes, most noticeably the piloting of Navy flights which transported the drug bodies of victims of the military’s state-terror operations.

Based on statements he made to journalist Horacio Verbitsky, Scilingo piloted at least two flights —one in June 1977 and another in August 1977 — carrying a total of 30 people whose bodies were thrown into the River Plate.

He was also found to have played an active role in a kidnapping in mid 1977, while the court considered him complicit in at least 255 similar situations linked to the former Navy Mechanics School (ESMA) torture centre.